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Jasmine Hemsley

Best-Selling Cookbook Author

A wellbeing expert, Jasmine Hemsley has inspired a global audience to shift their perspectives on food and lifestyle as a founder of Hemsley Hemsley. With a passion for home-cooked food and natural remedies, she has captured the attention of a vast global audience, and uses her platform as an author and influencer to encourage a return to a simpler, more mindful everyday life.

Jasmine's latest concept is East by West, an idea that came to life as a Pop-Up café within the Maiyet Concept Store between October - December 2016. Inspired by her travels in Sri Lanka and India, East by West realises Jasmine's vision of Ayurvedic cuisine and wisdom. Following a successful three month pop-up at Maiyet, the East by West cookbook launched in November 2017, delving further into Jasmine's passion for holistic Eastern foods and therapies.

Connect with Jasmine Hemsley

Q&A

What is your wellness philosophy?

My wellness philosophy incorporates Eastern wisdom with the best of modern Western wellbeing and traditional values. As an author, cook and restaurant owner, I look at the whole 360 of health — the mind and spirit, as well as the body - at the heart of this lies seasonal, fresh, organic food cooked with love. We are part of nature, so it follows that getting back to natural ways of living and eating is the key to our wellbeing. I love the tried and tested, holistic approach of Ayurveda, and have been applying it to my life and work for the last ten years. When I was researching the best way to look after myself during my modelling career, it kept coming up. At first, it looked too complicated and foreign, but several things made too much sense to ignore — for example, getting in line with the circadian rhythm of the Earth, sleeping before 10 pm, preferring cooked food for easier digestion, making lunch the biggest meal of the day.

What brought you into wellness?

A realization that my mums’ old-fashioned home cooking felt intuitively, physically and spiritually so much more nourishing than the fad diets. I felt outraged by the “science” and marketing that led us into a low-fat, low-calorie world, where all calories are equal and therefore to be healthy you just need to eat less and move more. This was a gross oversimplification. Also, I felt unsatisfied with the specialization of medicine which can miss the holistic picture when it comes to health. I had this epiphany when dealing with my own health issues, which my GP knew nothing about and just wanted to prescribe me drugs to suppress symptoms rather than addressing the underlying issues. I found a passion for navigating my way through the complicated landscape of health rules, health misinformation and general nonsensical jargon. When I realized how much this new approach was helping me, I understood that it could help others too, which is why I began spreading the knowledge I’d acquired. Take the recent fascination with gut-health and digestion as an example - Ayurveda and Hippocrates have been talking about this for thousands of years. While we’ve made huge advances in surgery, medicine and sanitization today, we’re realizing that when it comes to maintaining health the new health rules are actually the old ones!

What does You. We. All. mean to you?

We are all born of nature, full of a desire for happiness, connection and positive energy. Ayurveda teaches a holistic approach to life and how all things are interrelated in a constantly shifting dance of balance. My work and study as a sound healer and sound therapist has also highlighted how we are all vibrating energies interacting with everything else. Whether we like it or not, we are ALL one. Once we accept and embrace this, and begin to live life according to that principle, existence becomes a joyful ride of experience, wonder and good vibrations.

What empowers you?

Knowing that I am part of something so much bigger than myself. I love this quote from Rumi which helps me find perspective when my world feels upside down, or when I’m at a loss as to where I’m going, “You are not a drop in the ocean, you are the entire ocean in a drop.”